The Christa McAuliffe Center at Framingham State University opens its planetarium for free public presentations on the third Friday of each month (except April). The shows on December 15 will be Holiday Skies, at 5:30PM and 6:30PM. Space is limited, and pre-registration for the 5:30PM show or 6:30PM show is strongly recommended. Arrive on campus 20 minutes early (directions and parking).
Category Archives: Events
Museum of Science: 50% Off on Fridays, Dec. 8 & 15
Boston’s Museum of Science is offering a 50% discount on admission to its exhibit halls, 3PM-9PM on these Fridays: December 8 and 15.
Boston Tech Mom: Tech Events for Kids in December
Boston Tech Mom (“a parent’s guide to raising a future techie”) is a great resource for all things STEM around Boston — including her monthly posts about free or low-cost STEM Events for Kids in Boston. Here’s her December list of STEM events.
‘Sound Ideas’ — Teen Science Cafe at MIT Museum, Dec. 2
The MIT Museum will host its next Teen Science Cafe for high-school students on December 2, 6-8:30PM, focused on the science of sound and music. Admission is free and dinner will be provided. Seating is limited and registration is required. Doors will open at 5:45PM and no one will be admitted after 7PM. The event will include a musical performance by Newton South HS’s Crescendo acapella group and these talks:
- Converting Sound to Neural Signals
- Musician and Mega-Machine: Compositions Driven by Real-Time Particle Collision Data from the ATLAS Detector
- Using Sound Waves to Separate Cancer Cells from the Blood
- Fabric Keyboard – Multimodal Textile as an Expressive and Deformable Musical Interface
MassBay STEM Expo, Dec. 13
MassBay Community College will host its bi-annual STEM Expo, 11AM-Noon on December 13 at its Wellesley Hills campus cafeteria (50 Oakland Street) to showcase the accomplishments of students and faculty. It’s free and open to the public. Topics include Engineering Design, Robotics, Game Programming, Cyber Security, Protein Purification, Biotechnology, and Statistics and Quantitative Reasoning.
MITS: 2018 STEM Professional Development Seminars
The Museum Institute for Teaching Science will hold a series of professional-development seminars at Clark University in Worcester for staff, volunteers, and other museum professionals, as well as teachers. The cost is $40 per day, with discounts for multiple days. Register and pay online. Dates are topics are:
January 24
- Extreme Events and Climate Change: What We Know and Some Ideas About What to Do About It
- How We Know What We Know: Using Real-World Data to Explore Key Climate Concepts
February 14
- Developing a Taste for Molecular Biology
- Sharing Science: Connecting Scientists and Engineers with the Public
March 28
- Dig In: Strengthening Sustainability Learning Through Farm-to-School Connections
April 24
- The Technology, Data and People Behind Forecasting in the National Weather Service
- Engaging Students with Weather & Climate Through Media
Newton Free Library: STEM Events in December
The Newton Free Library will host the following STEM events in December:
- December 7: Scratch Club, 7-8PM, Grades 3-4. Space is limited. Pick up tickets 15 minutes beforehand at the Children’s Desk.
- December 19: Intro to Ozobots, 4PM, Grades 2-4. Registration opens November 28.
- December 29: LEGO Club, 10AM, Unstructured building time for kids old enough to not put LEGOs in their mouths!
LigerBots Host FIRST LEGO League Newton Qualifier
Yesterday, the Newton LigerBots high-school robotics team hosted the Newton Qualifier competition for 24 FIRST LEGO League (FLL) teams, including these 7 teams from Newton (in this photo, left to right): Day Dragons, Vikings, Roaming Rovers, Outlaws of Newton, Tacocats, Atomic Bots, and Newtronics. Each team built and programmed a LEGO Mindstorms robot to accomplish 18 separate missions in the competition. Each team also completed a research project related to this year’s theme, Hydro Dynamics, and presented results to a team of adult judges. Finally, each team was interviewed and scored on how well they exhibited FLL’s Core Values.
Newton teams won the following FLL awards: The Day Dragons won the Champion’s Award. The Newtronics won the Teamwork Award. The Roaming Rovers won the Software Programming Award. And the Tacocats won the Research Project Award. The Day Dragons, Roaming Rovers, and Newtronics each qualified to advance to the Eastern Massachusetts State Championship, which will be held at Newton North HS on December 16 (again hosted by the LigerBots). That event, too, will be free, open to the public, and a lot of fun, with more teams competing and more hands-on exhibits in the accompanying Maker Fair.
MIT Edgerton’s ‘Science on Saturday’ for Grades K-12, Dec. 2: Nuclear Science and Engineering
MIT’s Edgerton Center holds free Science on Saturday programs approximately monthly during the school year for elementary, middle, and high school students — as well as their parents and teachers. Each is a fun, one-hour, interactive presentation beginning at 10AM in MIT’s Kresge Auditorium, 48 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge. Kids under 12 must be accompanied by an adult. Attendees also receive same-day admission to the MIT Museumat half-price. No pre-registration is necessary but seating is limited and first-come, first-seated. The next program will be December 2: Nuclear Science and Engineering. For more information, contact Dr. Todd H. Rider, Mad Scientist in Residence, at thor@mit.edu.
Register for Science on Saturday (Real-World Robotics) at MIT Lincoln Labs, Dec. 9
Registration is now open for two Saturday-morning sessions of Science on Saturday, on December 9 at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory (244 Wood Street in Lexington). The topic will be Real-World Robotics presented by the Robotics Outreach at Lincoln Laboratory (ROLL) Employee Resource Group. All children (5-17 years) must be escorted by an adult, and every adult must be escorted by a child or children. Children under 5 are not admitted. Admission is free but each person attending must be registered. Space is limited, so register online soon for either Session 1 (9AM to 10:30AM) or Session 2: 10:45AM to 12:15PM). Register an adult first, then a child, then others. Adults must bring government photo identification. See other rules on the registration pages.